Composer
Richard Strauss
A master orchestrator who pushed the symphonic poem to its most vivid extreme.
Richard Strauss (no relation to the Strauss waltz family) took the symphonic poem - a form pioneered by Liszt - and pushed it toward extraordinarily vivid, almost literal orchestral storytelling, using the full resources of the Late Romantic orchestra to depict specific scenes, characters, and even philosophical ideas in sound.
Life in brief
Strauss was born in Munich in 1864. His father, Franz, was the principal horn player of the city's court orchestra and a fierce opponent of Wagner's music, and he raised his son on Mozart and Beethoven. As a young man, though, Strauss fell under Wagner's spell, and in his twenties he burst onto the scene with a run of brilliant tone poems, beginning with Don Juan (1888).
From 1905 he turned to opera with even greater success. Salome, based on Oscar Wilde's play, scandalized audiences with its lurid story and dissonant music, and Elektra went further still. Then, with his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, he changed direction with Der Rosenkavalier (1911), a nostalgic comedy that became one of the most popular operas of the century. He was also one of the leading conductors of his day, and his wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, inspired much of his writing for the female voice.
His later life is the most troubling part of his story. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Strauss accepted the presidency of the state music bureau, and he was removed in 1935 after a letter to his Jewish librettist, Stefan Zweig, critical of the regime was intercepted. He used his position to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren, but his accommodation with the regime is still debated. He died in 1949 in his alpine home at Garmisch.
Music and style
Strauss was one of the most dazzling orchestrators who ever lived: he could make an orchestra depict bleating sheep, a hanging, a mountain storm, or a domestic squabble. His melodies soar, his harmony glows, and his writing for the soprano voice is among the most beautiful in music. He was proud of his craft - and he knew how to entertain.
Also sprach Zarathustra, inspired by Nietzsche's philosophical text, opens with a majestic sunrise depiction so widely used in film and media since that many listeners know its opening minute without knowing the piece's name or the philosophy behind it - most famously in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Key works
- Tone poems - Don Juan (1888), Death and Transfiguration, Till Eulenspiegel (1895), Also sprach Zarathustra (1896), Don Quixote, and Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero's Life").
- Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) - intense, shocking operas.
- Der Rosenkavalier (1911) - shows a different side entirely: a warm, nostalgic comedy set in 18th-century Vienna, rich with waltz-inflected melody.
- An Alpine Symphony (1915) - a day's mountain climb, complete with a wind machine.
- Metamorphosen (1945) - an elegy for 23 solo strings, written as Germany lay in ruins.
- Oboe Concerto (1945) and two horn concertos.
- Four Last Songs (1948) - radiant farewells for soprano and orchestra.
Legacy
Strauss lived long enough to see his Late Romantic style go from cutting-edge to old-fashioned as Modernism took hold around him, and he continued composing in his own lush idiom largely undeterred, becoming one of the last major voices working in a fully Romantic orchestral language. His orchestration shaped generations of film composers, and his operas and songs remain central to the repertoire.
Where to start listening: the opening of Also sprach Zarathustra is instantly recognizable; the final trio from Der Rosenkavalier shows his gift for vocal writing. Then try "Beim Schlafengehen" from the Four Last Songs.